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Sensing and Datalogging for Science Education |
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Sciencescope |
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Last updated 31st July 2008 Sensors Logbooks PriceLists Investigations 2008 Catalogue |
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Relationship between speed, time and accelerationMost
people think acceleration means getting faster, but it should be more precisely
defined. When
a car is getting faster, how long it takes to increase its speed is important. A
car with good acceleration increases its speed in a short time. Acceleration is defined as being: 
Notice
that the change in speed is given by final speed - initial speed. Normally
in Physics we use metres per second (m/s) for speeds. Acceleration is measured
in metres-per-second-per-second. All this means is a change in speed per second.
Sometimes you may see accelerations written as m/s² rather than m/s/s. They are
the same thing. We
also sometimes refer to a moving object as having a "constant
acceleration" or a "uniform
acceleration". A constant or uniform acceleration means
that the speed of the object changes by the same amount every second. When
an object's speed is decreasing with time (i.e. slowing down), we often refer to
this as "deceleration". Describing
a journey made by an object is very boring if you just use words. As with much
of science, graphs are more revealing. You are going to plot speed against time.
These graphs show us how the speed of an object changes with time.
These show how the Distance sensor was set up to study the acceleration.
View and/or download the worksheet View and/or download the Datadisc file examples of this investigation. (you must have Datadisc installed to view the file, downloadable from Download Centre) |
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